Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series)

by Rodney Hobson

  ‘How about teeth?’ Amos asked.

  ‘No chance of identifying him from his dental record,’ Slater intoned, the gloomy mood gradually assuming ascendancy again. ‘Perfect set of beautifully formed teeth. Not a sign of any dental work. He may not have visited a dentist in his life.’

  ‘In fact,’ Slater added, ‘he was probably a strikingly handsome young man. Try asking around the 30 somethings in the district. Should be quite a few women out there who will remember him.’

  ‘In that case we shall have to rely on the remains of the rubbish to try to narrow it down,’ Amos said woefully. There was something about Slater’s misery that was catching.

  ‘Ah well,’ replied Slater, brightening once more. ‘Always someone worse off than yourself. Always someone. Wash your hands well on the way out.’

  Chapter 4

  The small mountain of rubbish that Amos had considered sufficient to remove from the refuse tip was not allowed anywhere near police headquarters. Amos had been allocated a derelict hut, courtesy of East Lindsey District Council, on condition that in return for the free loan of an unused asset the police would reciprocate by allowing dumping to resume before the day was out.

  Det Sgt Juliet Swift was in charge, ambition overriding her distaste for the project. A mountain of empty black bags had also been conveniently provided by the council. These had been left over when East Lindsey moved on to wheelie bins. Rubber protective gloves had to come out of the police budget.

  Swift had managed to secure two uniformed constables to help: her friend Jane Wyman, a stunning beauty with looks to match her film star name and who seemed like a rose among the thorns shifting rubbish in a tip of a building; and John Lowe, the officer who had walked the perimeter earlier that day and who was keen to switch to CID.

  ‘We’re separating out papers and clothing as you asked,’ Swift said by way of greeting as Amos arrived just after midday. ‘Plenty of the former, hardly any of the latter.’

  Amos put on a pair of gloves and flicked through the clothing remnants. ‘Nothing to fit a slim, five foot six Adonis,’ he opined. ‘That’s our victim, by the way. Not much to go on.’

  Turning to Lowe, he asked: ‘John, we got interrupted yesterday so I didn’t get chance to ask you how secure the perimeter looked.’

  ‘Not very,’ came the reply. ‘There were several places, including one just beyond the trees, where intruders could get in. The wire fencing had rusted through in places and pegs where it was staked into the ground had been pulled up. There’s no doubt that someone could have got in and dumped the body.’

  Amos thought for a few moments as he sorted through various envelopes that featured among the paper. The addresses on them were scattered across Louth but came predominantly from the eastern half, particularly from East Street.

  ‘Nonetheless,’ he finally said, ‘I think we should work on the basis that this body came in with a regular collection of rubbish. It would be difficult to drag it in and bury it in the tip. We’ll keep an open mind about it but the addresses from around the body are our best hope of finding a lead.’

  The team worked on, mainly in silence broken only by one or other officer displaying some article of possible interest from time to time. By four o’clock all the stuff had been sifted through and placed unceremoniously into black bags taken from the surplus stock.

  An unsavoury odour hung over the room despite the opening of windows.

  Amos had taken the precaution of checking whether there were any missing persons reported on the police files from the relevant area but had drawn a blank.

  ‘We’ll take an early night,’ Amos announced. ‘Tomorrow at eight we start touting ourselves around East Street and we’ll work outwards. Let’s see if anyone remembers a young man disappearing about 15 years ago.

  ‘Juliet,’ he said to Swift as his mobile phone rang, ‘organize us a couple more detectives and see if we can keep these two for another day.’

  Leaving Swift to make the arrangements, Amos answered the call. A voice exploded.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ the Chief Constable demanded. ‘Why haven’t you given the council clearance to empty their lorries?’

  Amos had completely forgotten.

  ‘I gave the council my word we would get back to them as quickly as possible. It’s the least we could do after they bent over backwards to help us. They’ve got dustbin lorries queuing up at the site and blocking the road. I’ve had to put two officers onto directing traffic round them.’

  There was no possibility of shielding the rant from the junior officers. Amos bit the bullet.

  ‘I’m very sorry, sir. We’ve only just come clear,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ll ring the council right away and say we’ve done.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ snapped Fletcher. ‘David will do it. I’ve got quite enough on launching my new campaign to stop shopkeepers selling cigarettes to underage smokers to deal with your shortcomings.’

  And the line went dead. Amos resolved to ditch the mobile phone as soon as he was back at HQ.

  Chapter 5

  The small team assembled at the top of East Street promptly at 8am next morning. The road was used as a rat run by motorists to avoid the town centre and make for the bypass. It was just wide enough for cars to pass comfortably.

  Terrace houses flanked either side as the road sloped down towards the river. A main road ran across the top and the bottom.

  Handing a clipboard to Det Sgt Swift, Amos announced: ‘Juliet, collate the responses. John, you come with me. Marie,’ he said to Detective Constable Holmes, ‘you take George,’ he added indicating the second male uniformed officer, Constable Martin.

  ‘We’ll work in pairs. Ask how long the residents have lived in the house and how long they have lived in the town if it’s less than fifteen years here in East Street. Any previous address near here. Then ask if they remember any boy around the age of twenty disappearing, or if they had heard of one going missing. Say boy or young man, not youth as that could mean a young woman.

  ‘Don’t tell them it’s a murder inquiry, just a case of a missing person we are now anxious to trace.’

  It took only an hour to work down the street. Starting early meant that most houses had at least one occupant at home prior to going to work or embarking on the school run. Although more than half the houses contained at least one resident who had lived somewhere in the town for at least fifteen years, the results were dispiriting. Not one person could recall a relevant disappearance.

  The small group gathered at the bottom end of the street to assess the results.

  There were fourteen people at eleven different houses who had lived in East Street for upwards of fifteen years and another eight residents in six more houses who had lived in the town for a similar period of time.

  Another seven had lived in the street or its surroundings for at least ten years and had heard not a whisper of a strange or abrupt disappearance. Five comparative newcomers to the street had relatives who had lived in the town longer than they had but had never heard a family member allude to any such incident.

  Swift summed up the unspoken feeling bluntly: ‘I think we are on completely the wrong track. Whoever he is, he did not live round here.’

  ‘I fear you are right,’ Amos concurred. ‘It was always a long shot but we had to try.

  ‘If this body was put out with the rubbish, there was bound to be a serious risk that it would be discovered. Even a small person of slight build would be much heavier than your average bin bag and the bin men might well have refused to take it or investigated what was in it.

  ‘There was a fair chance that, even if they did pick it up, the bag would break or the two bags would separate. The mechanism inside the back of the refuse lorry for dragging the rubbish forward was likely to puncture the bags and expose the body.

  ‘It would be extremely stupid to dump such a load on your own doorstep. The murderer probably lived at least several streets away and possibly outside th
e district altogether. He could have driven with the body in the boot with the intention of dropping it into the river, then seen the rubbish bags put out for the next day and taken the chance to hide his load in full view.’

  No-one present disagreed. Finally, Amos declared: ‘Let’s get back to base.’

  Chapter 6

  If the door to door inquiries down East Street had been an expected damp squib, the reception back at headquarters more than made up with unexpected fireworks.

  The Chief Constable’s excitable and ever nervous press secretary David, an apology of a man who did all Fletcher’s running around to the satisfaction of no-one, was hopping up and down in Amos’s office when he arrived back.

  Luckily Amos had shed the company of the two uniformed male officers on the way in and then sent the willing Detective Constable Holmes off to get coffee from the canteen for himself and his sergeant, so only Swift was present to witness the inspector’s discomfort.

  ‘The Chief Constable wants to see you immediately,’ David declared, emboldened by carrying the top officer’s delegated authority.

  ‘No, immediately,’ he persisted as Amos made to take off his coat. ‘And he’s called a press conference for 2 pm which you will take.’

  This was evidently serious, apparently taking precedence over the Chief Constable’s latest soapbox of tobacco sales to children.

  ‘Better get it over with,’ Amos told Swift wryly. ‘Stay well clear.’

  Amos followed the impatient David along the corridor and up the stairs to the lion’s den. Sir Robert Fletcher was indeed in a ferocious temper.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ he demanded before Amos was fully into the room. ‘Why was I not kept informed? Why did I have to learn about it on Radio Lincolnshire?’

  This was bad news indeed. Amos could hardly point out that the Chief Constable usually did not wish to be bothered with details of any investigation, and since Amos had neglected to put Radio Lincolnshire on his car radio on the way back he had no idea what had been broadcast.

  ‘We made an early start on a case, sir,’ Amos blustered. ‘We needed to catch people before they went to work.’

  If in doubt, prevaricate. Once Fletcher had the bit between his teeth Amos knew he would soon get chapter and verse.

  ‘Don’t be funny with me, inspector,’ the Chief Constable snorted leaning over his desk with both clenched hands pressing into the top.

  This was worse than Amos had expected. Being called inspector rather than Amos was a particularly bad sign. And there was still no clue as to what had prompted the outburst.

  Fletcher decided to take silence for subservience and was slightly appeased. However, he was not prepared to stint on the indignation that had been building up for the past hour, nor to shorten the impromptu diatribe that he had been practising in the meantime.

  ‘I do not like,’ he said slowly and deliberately, ‘to have news that we have found an old body on a rubbish tip leaked out to the press without it going through David. No-one was authorized to say what it was we had found.

  ‘As if that was not bad enough, we then had newspapers and press agencies ringing up for details on top of the radio station demanding more information and you were nowhere to be seen to sort it out. No-one in CID seemed to know where you were. In fact, there was no-one in CID except for a couple of wet behind the ears teenagers.’

  There was no arguing with Fletcher when he was in this mood. Amos therefore declined to point out that he, at least, had been out doing something useful and was not responsible for the leak or the CID roster. Nor did he recruit the newcomers, who were in any case never younger than 21 in CID.

  ‘I will not have my authority undermined and in future there will be someone senior in CID at 8 am every morning and someone senior on call throughout the night,’ Fletcher thundered on.

  Deciding that he had better say something, Amos replied calmly: ‘I understood that was already the case.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent,’ the Chief Constable blurted out with difficulty. However, his fury and the interruption diverted him from his flow and he spluttered as more carefully chosen words failed to come to him.

  Finally he subsided with the order: ‘The press conference is called for 2pm. David,’ he continued, looking up at the press officer who was standing in the doorway, ‘David has done an admirable job in rescuing the situation and getting everyone together. Two o’clock sharp. See to it.’

  This was a disaster. Amos would be forced out into the open before he was ready and worst still, Sheila Burns would believe that he had betrayed her by releasing the news of the body to a rival and then giving all the other available information to everyone else at the same time.

  At last came the silver lining: ‘You needn’t waste officers on this investigation. You don’t know who it is and you’re not likely to find out unless someone comes forward. I need some plain clothes officers checking out tobacconists for my important new campaign.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Amos replied, and he meant it as far as the first part of this final command was concerned. There was indeed little more to be done at this stage.

  Unsure whether to take this remark as genuine or insolent, Fletcher waved the inspector out.

  Chapter 7

  To add to his woes, Amos found on his return to the CID department that Sheila Burns was on the phone. Swift had taken the call and she put her hand over the mouthpiece as Amos walked up to her desk.

  ‘Sheila Burns from the Echo,’ Swift said quietly. ‘Very irate and very persistent. I kept her talking but shall I get rid of her?’

  ‘Put her through to my office. I’ll take it in private,’ Amos responded.

  As he walked through the door to his inner sanctum, Amos could hear his colleague saying: ‘Just putting you through to Detective Inspector Amos now.’

  The phone rang on his desk and he picked it up as he collapsed into his swivel chair. Office and chair were new to him, a reward for clearing up a previous murder inquiry that had caused consternation among some of the Chief Constable’s acquaintances. Would it be taken away from him now?

  ‘Sheila,’ Amos said as smoothly as he could. ‘Let me explain.’

  ‘Explain,’ the reporter exploded. ‘I thought we had an understanding. I held off as you asked and all I get as a reward is to be beaten by a poxy local radio station. Then you call a press conference for two o’clock which as you well know means I shan’t have the proper story until the final edition – if I’m lucky.’

  ‘Sheila, I assure you I did not tip off Radio Lincolnshire. I don’t know where they got it from. And I can’t give you any further information until the press conference.

  ‘However,’ he added hastily as the indignant Burns began to protest further, ‘I couldn’t get back to you sooner because I was out of the office early beginning my investigation.’

  The words had become increasingly slow and emphasized. Burns took the hint and fell silent.

  ‘I was out of contact for some time because it’s a fair way from HQ in Lincoln to the nearest town to the tip. I suppose it’s always possible that someone saw police officers going from door to door in East Street though I shan’t be able to say anything on that score until this afternoon.

  ‘I suppose you can work out for yourself that we don’t yet have a name for this body that we are supposed to have found after 15 years. So sorry, I can’t tell you anything before the press conference.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ the now partly satisfied Burns replied. ‘See you at two.’

  Amos was treading a fine line. The story in the Echo detailing how old the body was and that police had been seeking whether anyone remembered a disappearance 15 years ago would be written before the press conference but the newspaper would not reach police HQ until afterwards.

  With luck Fletcher would not realize that Burns must have had an inside tipoff. No doubt she would have worked out which town Amos had visited that morning and had a contact in the area who could fi
nd someone in East Street to verify what the police had been asking.

  Chapter 8

  The press conference attracted the usual bunch of reporters: Radio Lincolnshire and the Lincolnshire Echo looking relaxed and smug after stealing a march on the others; BBC Look North with a superior air and an attendant cameraman; and a couple of local newspapers looking harassed and playing catch-up.

  ‘It’s all on the record,’ Amos announced in expansive fashion, glancing up at David who was hopping from one foot to the other in agitation in the doorway.

  The inspector outlined the basic details, remaining as matter-of-fact as possible given the grisly nature of the find.

  The body had been found on a rubbish dump in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire late in the evening two days ago; the body appeared to have been there for about 15 years and had been buried under a large quantity of rubbish; there was no obvious identification on or near the body; the police were appealing for any information on any male aged in his late teens or early 20s, about 5 feet 6 inches tall, slim with dark hair, who had vanished in the late 1970s.

  Having already broadcast his scoop, and blessed with the ability to update his audience more rapidly than his print rivals, the Radio Lincolnshire reporter was anxious to press home his advantage.

  ‘Peter Coombes, BBC Radio Lincolnshire,’ he said, smirking and rising to his feet for lesser media mortals to survey. ‘Do you believe the body has been there for 15 years or was it slipped in through the fence more recently?’

  He’s done his research, Amos thought. He knows about the gaps in the perimeter wire netting.

  ‘We can’t entirely rule out an intruder but we are 99.9 per cent satisfied that the body has been there all this time. Successive bags of rubbish have been tipped on top from lorries over the years and it would be extremely difficult to insert a skeleton underneath. It is purely by chance that the body has been exposed at this point in time.’